Europe

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary is working to modify financing for a nuclear plant being built by Russia so it only starts repaying the loan once the two reactors begin supplying power, a Hungarian minister said, after an EU review of the plans contributed to delays in the project.

The existing 2 Gigawatt Paks plant, which accounts for half of Hungary's power capacity and meets a third of consumption, started up in the 1980s and will be decommissioned in the 2030s.

MINSK, 14 January (BelTA) – Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko signed decree No.15 “On responsibility for nuclear damage” on 14 January, the press service of the head of state told BelTA.

The document creates a mechanism to ensure financial assurance for damage caused by an activity involving nuclear energy. The decree limits the liability for damage of the state enterprise Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant to 150 special drawing rights per nuclear incident.

(CN) – The European Court of Justice scolded Slovakia on Thursday for imposing a charge on one of its own power companies to export electricity to other member states.

Slovakia adopted the scheme in 2008 following the cessation of two units at the Jaslovské Bohunice nuclear power plant. Though the charge is no longer applied, the Slovak company Korlea Invest, which is the legal successor to the company FENS, at the time faced a requirement to pay 6.8 million euros.

Irregularities have been found in around 50 Areva-made components installed in French nuclear reactors, nuclear regulator ASN said on Tuesday.

It said that after the discovery of weak spots in the reactor vessel of the EPR reactor under construction in Flamanville, France last year, Areva began a review of manufacturing procedures at its Creusot steel forging plant.

In a statement, ASN said it had been informed by Areva that its investigation had found evidence of irregularities in about 400 components produced since 1965, of which some 50 are believed to be in use in French nuclear plants.

Germany demanded Friday that France close down its oldest nuclear plant, Fessenheim, near the German and Swiss borders -- just one of several ageing atomic plants that are unsettling France's neighbours.

"This power plant is very old, too old to still be in operation," said a spokesman for Environment and Nuclear Safety Minister Barbara Hendricks.

German energy companies are short of as much as 30 billion euros ($34 billion) of the money they need to set aside to build a safe disposal site for nuclear waste as part of the country's exit from nuclear power, Spiegel Online reported on Monday.

E.ON, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall are due to switch off their nuclear plants by a 2022 deadline set by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.

Plans for a new nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point are in doubt after EDF experienced setbacks with the technology in France

EDF, the French state-owned power company, can point to one big advantage of the nuclear power station it intends to build at Hinkley Point in south-west England. Once fired up, the plant's reactors will churn out electricity at a steady price, unmoved by volatility in wholesale gas prices.

France’s nuclear safety authority won’t decide until early next year whether a key piece of equipment on a nuclear reactor being built by Electricite de France SA in Normandy is safe or needs to be changed, the regulator said.

“I don’t see us making a decision or taking a position before the beginning of 2016,” Pierre-Franck Chevet, president of Autorite de Surete Nucleaire, told a hearing at the French Senate Tuesday. The finding could range from rejecting the equipment as unsafe to allowing its use under certain conditions, he said.